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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Postcards from Claremont 4 -- Living on the Edge

What does it mean to live on the edge? We like living in a certain comfort zone, don't we? But what happens when we're pushed outside the zone? Sometimes, when we live at the edge, we grow, we throw off complacency, and embrace a new reality. For "Mainline" Protestants, the past was marked by a certain religious hegemony. More than half a century ago, C.C. Morrison, the founding editor of the Christian Century, wrote a book called The Unfinished Reformation (Harper and Bros., 1953) that could speak of Mainline Protestantism holding some two-thirds of the Christian community outside Roman Catholicism. Mainline Protestants ruled the land. That reality is no longer true, but no longer can we afford to be complacent. In this postcard from Claremont, Bruce Epperly, calls on moderate and progressive Christians to embrace their new place living on the edge. He speaks of the work that is being done by Claremont School of Theology and the new Claremont Lincoln University to provide an education for those seeking to be on that edge. I invite you to read and respond.

Postcards from
Claremont – 4 –

Living on the Edge

Bruce G. Epperly

Recently,
I heard Claremont School of Theology described as “edgy” and choosing these
days to be “edgier” in giving birth to the innovative interreligious emphasis
that is at the heart of both the seminary and recently-established Claremont
Lincoln University. This seems
appropriate because California has always been, as one author asserted, “at the
edge of history” in its creative synthesis of East and West and tradition and
novelty. Here on the Left Coast anything
is possible and dreams become realities on a daily basis, not just in Hollywood
but in the embodiment of new forms of faith and spiritual formation. Here, a Christian seminary can embrace what
many religious institutions evade or deny: the reality that faithfulness to God
demands dialogue, embrace, and partnership with the global spiritualities of
our time.

Living
on the edge is often frightening, and it is always adventurous. These days, moderate and progressive
Christianity has found itself at the margins of North American religion and
culture. Once center channel, we have
found ourselves at the declining edges in terms of membership and influence on
society. Some even ask if liberal
Christianity can survive. The disestablishment of mainstream Christianity has
been profoundly disorienting, but – as Robert McAfee Brown once claimed – this
“creative dislocation” is precisely the place where we may experience the
surprises of grace.

Today,
in many congregations, not to mention Claremont, we are discovering that the
edges have become the frontiers – the places where creative, life-changing, and
earth-sustaining ideas are emerging. In
fact, these days, despite the uncertainties facing progressive Christianity and
our planet, the only place worth being is at the growing edges of life. Rather than passively adjusting to our
diminished institutional role in a pluralist, post-modern world, we are
claiming our vocation to be prophetic partners with God in shaping our future
and seeking to heal the world for “just such a time as this.”

Over
thirty five years ago, I had the opportunity to a hear Howard Thurman give a
lecture sponsored by Scripps College.
Thurman has been one of my spiritual mentors in his quest for a living faith
for all peoples. As I take my early
morning walks from my apartment at the Seminary through Scripps College, Pomona
College, and the village of Claremont, I often reflect on the meaning of Thurman’s
poem, “The Growing Edge” for my own personal and professional vocations:

Look
well to the growing edge! This is my
mantra as I listen to graduate and seminary students share their visions of
life-giving theologies and spiritual practices.
I feel this same sense of hard-won growth as I listen to Jerry Campbell,
President of Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Lincoln University, share
his vision of an exciting future for these two innovative institutions. Campbell confesses that the seminary was at
the edge of bankruptcy several years back – some even thought that the seminary
would have to close its door - but rather than retrenching and thinking small,
the seminary planned for great things, initiating – as the philosopher Alfred
North Whitehead says - novelty to match the novelties of the environment.

We will
not grow – or survive in the long run – personally, individually, politically,
and globally unless we look to the growing edges, taking prudent risks to
transform ourselves and the world. So,
every morning as the sun rises over the seminary, I ask myself in the course of
my peripatetic pilgrimage: “What is my growing edge? What is the growing edge for process theology
and the progressive and emerging Christian movements? What new and creative adventure is God luring
us toward at this particular spiritual and cultural impasse?” Progressive Christianity, process theology,
emerging Christianity, and institutions like Claremont School Theology and
Claremont Lincoln University are alive and growing, leaning forward from the
edges that beckon us to new frontiers for persons and the planet.